We took a drive out to The Ridge Motorsports Park a couple of weekends ago to check out the annual Audi Club Northwest “Son of QuattroFest” event. The local Audi Club chapter hosts high performance driver’s education (HPDE) events throughout the year and this would be our first to see what they are about – from a spectator’s point of view, anyway. We ultimately wanted to practice some panning photography to see if we could make any improvement from our first (blogged about) attempts at a Test N’ Tune event we went to a couple of years ago… Man, time is flyin’!

“The Ridge” sits on a 170-acre piece of property near Shelton, WA featuring a 2.5 mile road course complete with 16 turns and a change in elevation of more than 300 feet from start to finish. We posted up at the bottom of a 3-turn corkscrew that drops 80 ft in elevation in just under 400 ft of tarmac and the start of a long straightaway. With cameras unpacked we immediately got to work!

An Audi R8 GT feeling right at home!

Scott pushes his new, Sepang Blue Pearl Audi RS5 to the limit with no reservations.

While Son of QuattroFest is an Audi Club event, all makes and models are welcome provided they “pass tech”, meaning they meet all the required safety criteria. Drivers are placed in different classes based on skill level with instructors on hand for driver’s education.

Brad not only tracks and daily drives an Audi, he sells them! Says a lot about the confidence he’s got in the brand he represents.

One of us even got a chance to get a ride around the track sitting passenger in Todd’s BMW E36 328i featuring race-spec H&R coilovers and StopTech’s Trophy brake kit (and a laundry list of other improvements and upgrades). The combination of parts were undoubtedly put to the ultimate test and performed beyond this writer’s expectations, instilling even more confidence in the same brands of suspension and brake upgrades we run on our personal cars. Todd is also one of the very qualified and skilled instructors who continues to volunteer his time and show other willing enthusiasts how to take their cars to the limits, and control them!

Thanks for that incredible ride-along around the track, Todd!

We’re bound to head out to another one of these events again and look forward to the opportunity to continue practicing – we need it! A longer range telephoto lens with image stabilization would also be a big help… Need to put that on the ever-growing wish list! Click here to see the rest of the images from our day out at The Ridge with the ACNW. (We still have a few more to go through and upload, so keep checking back.)